The evening light was like honey in the trees When you left me and walked to the end of the street Where the sunset abruptly ended. The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself To the fragile forget-me-not flower. You climbed aboard. Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones, Dreams I had, including suicide, Puff out the hot-air balloon now. It is bursting, it is about to burst
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the beauty and transience of moments, mingling emotions of love, loss, and dreams.
John Ashbery's quote is a vivid and surreal reflection on longing and the ephemeral nature of relationships. The imagery evokes the pain of separation and the beauty found in memories, metaphorically illustrating how moments can be both enchanting and fleeting, much like the golden hues of a sunset that signify the end of a day. The mention of dreams and a troubled mindset indicates a complex interplay of hope and despair, emphasizing the emotional weight carried by the speaker.
In practice
In a poetry reading about lost love, this quote can underscore the emotions of longing and beauty.
But always and sometimes questioning the old modes_x000D_ _x000D_ And the new wondering, the poem, growing up through the floor,_x000D_ _x000D_ Standing tall in tubers, invading and smashing the ritual_x000D_ _x000D_ Parlor, demands to be met on its own terms now,_x000D_ _x000D_ Now that the preliminary negotiations are at last over.
Then let yourself love all that you take delight in_x000D_ _x000D_ Accept yourself whole, accept the heritage_x000D_ _x000D_ That shaped you and is passed on from age to age_x000D_ _x000D_ Down to your entity. Remain mysterious;_x000D_ _x000D_ Rather than be pure, accept yourself as numerous.
until only infinity remained of beauty
The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot be.
The sun fades like the spreading_x000D_ _x000D_ Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight_x000D_ _x000D_ Might be read as a warning to those desperate_x000D_ _x000D_ For easy solutions.
Life is beautiful. He who reads that_x000D_ _x000D_ As in the window of some distant, speeding train_x000D_ _x000D_ Knows what he wants, and what will befall.
I could stifle my voice, or strip it. I know that I could, because we can do anything we put our minds to. I know that I could, but it feels very unnatural for me to strip my prose like that, in part because place is so important to me.
The whole world of publishing is moving to electronic, but when you put a poem on a screen and you increase the type size, the shape of a poem changes.
Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
I know I can not paint a flower, I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint colour I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.
Creation exists only in the unforeseen made necessary.
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